but if you lift your eyes
by astahfrith
Summary: Sometimes, the hardest part about change is wanting it. (Genji and Zenyatta have a conversation about choice, change, and belief.)


**but if you lift your eyes**

* * *

 _let your faith die  
_ _bring your wonder  
yes you are only one_  
 _no it is not enough -_  
 _but if you lift your eyes,_  
 _i am your brother_

* * *

Zenyatta comes to find him after morning meditation is over. Genji hadn't gone today – he'd woken with a weariness in his bones and a decided lack of motivation for any activity involving other people that had kept him in bed long past when he should have begun the trek to the shrine. He knows he will have to bear the brunt of Zenyatta's disappointment, but today, it seems a small price to pay to not have to face the other monks. They don't understand why Zenyatta continues to let him stay, continues to try to reach him, when he has, how did Idatta say it the other day when he thought Genji couldn't hear? "Proven so unreceptive to the Iris's teaching."

"If he is so unreceptive, then why is he still here?" Zenyatta had asked in return, calm as ever.

Idatta couldn't answer. Neither, though, can Genji. He lies on his pallet, listening to the thrum of his own systems and watching the shadows shift across the ceiling, and wonders. It's been six months since he came to the monastery with Zenyatta, overflowing with rage and bitterness and no hope to ever be anything else. He expected to be thrown out within a month.

Some part of him, maybe, had wanted to be. Had wanted to find the limits of Zenyatta's patience and kindness. To prove he was past saving, because to think otherwise was to dare to believe he could be more than what the clan and Hanzo and Blackwatch and Overwatch had made him, and the last time he thought that way, his own brother had tried to kill him.

But despite the grumblings of the other monks, Zenyatta has remained steadfast. Genji respects him for it, if nothing else. There are some days the anger and the bitterness leave nothing but ash in his mouth and a hollow ache in his chest, and maybe that's not better, but it's different.

It's only when he hears the distant ringing of the shrine bell, signaling an end to meditation, that Genji forces himself to rise. He knows that Zenyatta will come, and if the monk finds him still in bed he will worry.

(It has been many years since Genji had anyone to worry about him for his own sake, and it still catches him off guard, sometimes, the sincerity with which Zenyatta cares, even on the days that Genji gives him every reason not to.)

He sighs, pulling on an old Blackwatch hoodie that he'd never quite had the heart to get rid of, and slips out to the platform behind his room that overlooks the valley between the mountains. It is still deep in indigo shadow: the sun won't crest the mountaintop until near midday, and he settles himself crosslegged against the wall to wait, watching the sky above it shade slowly to bright, cheerful blue.

This is where Zenyatta finds him, ten minutes later. The monk's approach is, as usual, silent, and though Genji is expecting it the knock and the call of his name still startles him. "Out here," he calls back, and a few moments later, Zenyatta emerges from the doorway next to him. He looks around briefly before he spots Genji, and he seems to relax slightly at the sight of him.

"Ah," he says. "There you are, Genji. We missed you at meditation this morning."

There is, to Genji's confusion, no disappointment or chastisement to be found in the words. It is simply a statement of fact. He feels guilty, suddenly, nonetheless. "I know," he says, looking down. "I apologize."

"There is no need to apologize," Zenyatta says, and his hand settles on Genji's shoulder, startling him into looking up. "Sometimes tranquility is not found in the presence of others," he adds, and despite the lack of apparatus needed to make facial expressions, the monk still manages to look gentle. Genji looks down again, vaguely uncomfortable with such a thing being directed at him, with how easily Zenyatta seems to see to the heart of him.

"May I join you?" Zenyatta asks a moment later, and Genji hesitates. He could say no, he knows. Zenyatta would respect it – he has always respected Genji's boundaries. Indeed, at his hesitance, Zenyatta pulls his hand away. "I will, of course, leave if you wish to be alone," he says, and Genji finds himself shaking his head before he quite understands what he's doing.

"No," he says, more sharply than he means to. "You can stay," he adds, softer, when Zenyatta stills, seemingly shocked at the force of his outburst. "If you wish." He doesn't look up.

"If you are sure..." Zenyatta says, and finally settles beside him when Genji nods. He's not sure, not at all, and he waits, slightly tense, wondering if now will come the questions. For the moment, however, Zenyatta seems content to just sit. His orbs, until now simply floating quietly around his neck, come to life with a flare of golden light, chiming softly as they spin in lazy circles. Zenyatta makes a gesture towards one, a question and an offer in the tilt of his head, but Genji shakes his and it settles back into orbit with its siblings without further comment.

Slowly, Genji lets the tension run out of his shoulders, and he turns his gaze back to the sky, picking absently at the threadbare sleeves of his hoodie. The void of the valley yawns underneath them, the morning mist starting to burn away to reveal the unforgiving crags of the peak below them. It had unnerved Genji more than he would ever care to admit, the first month he was here, all the empty, echoing silence only a few feet from where he slept.

Now, sometimes, he sits in this same spot in the middle of the night, staring into the dark and taking solace in the fact that there are, in fact, deeper voids in the world than the one Hanzo carved in him.

"Why am I still here?" he asks eventually, quietly. Zenyatta takes the abrupt interruption of their almost companionable silence in stride, tilting his head towards Genji with a soft hum.

"That," he says, carefully, without turning to look at him, "Is a question I believe you need to find the answer to for yourself."

Genji frowns sharply at the non-answer, and he turns to face him, seized by a sudden restless energy. "Does it not bother you?" he asks. "That I don't believe in – anything you teach? I heard you the other day," he adds. "With Idatta."

"I know you did," Zenyatta responds calmly, and that brings Genji up short, agitation fizzling in the face of his confusion.

"I – what?" he says, quite eloquently.

"I heard you approach," Zenyatta says, and finally he turns to look at Genji. "While normally I would chastise you for eavesdropping, in this case, I believe, it was a conversation you needed to hear. A question you needed to begin to ask yourself. You are welcome here, Genji," he says, his tone as gentle as before. "For as long as you would like to stay. Regardless of what the others say. Your lack of belief has never bothered me. The Iris works in the ways that it will, and persists regardless of yours _or_ my belief in it. But I think that you would benefit from a closer look at your own motivations for being here."

Genji doesn't respond for a very long moment. A part of him wants to be angry, at the manipulation, at the presumption, but the emotion burns itself out before it's even begun. Zenyatta has done nothing to deserve it. He asks so little of Genji – has asked little more of him since his arrival, he knows, than respect for their teachings, if not belief.

He talks, of course, on the rare occasions Genji is willing to listen. He listens, on the even rarer occasions Genji is willing to talk. He doesn't ask him to go, even on the days when Genji is dark and angry and lashes out at the world and everything in it.

But he doesn't ask him to stay, either. Maybe, Genji thinks, this is why he does.

"You gave me a choice," he says, before he can stop himself, and feels Zenyatta start beside him, clearly not expecting a response in any way resembling an answer. "The Shimada clan and Hanzo never gave me a choice. Neither did Overwatch. Not one that mattered."

He pauses, fighting with the words that seem to stick in his throat. Zenyatta is silent, recognizing the fragility of the moment. "Coming here – " he starts, stops. Swallows. "Coming here was the first choice I'd truly made for myself in as long as I can remember. Even leaving Overwatch wasn't much of one, in the end."

(It wasn't. It was more a bone deep certainty that no matter how much he gave, Overwatch would never stop taking, until he died. Perhaps the Genji Shimada that woke up in their medbay all those years ago would have found such an end attractive. But there was still a part of him, however small – the Genji Shimada that stood with his back straight and sword in hand in the face of his certain death by dragonfire – that recoiled from the thought of that quiet, nameless end.

If he was going to die, was the thought that drove him through his abandonment of Overwatch, he would do it on his own terms, this time.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Overwatch died first.)

His chest feels tight, with bitterness, yes, but something else that he can't quite name. "I don't believe in myself and my ability to change the way you seem to," he admits. "I don't know if I _can_. But I'm tired." He can't bring himself to look at Zenyatta as he says it, feeling like he's confessing some terrible secret. "I'm tired of letting what my brother did define me."

This is not a thought he has ever allowed himself to voice before, but he feels the truth of it. He's tired down to the marrow of his bones, stretched thin as the wispy clouds above and as empty as the valley below. The wind whistles in the silence between him and Zenyatta, and he closes his eyes.

"I have always thought," Zenyatta says after a long moment, soft and calm, "that change starts not with believing that you can, but _hoping_ that you can. _Wanting_ it, more than anything else. Look at me, Genji."

The last is a command, a tone Genji has never heard from the monk, and slowly he lifts his head to look at him. Zenyatta stares back, inscrutable, immovable.

"What do you want, Genji?" he asks, and the question feels like a blow, a knife between the ribs that leaves him gasping for air.

How strange it is, to be asked what he wants. So few have ever bothered, and it hurts in a way he can't describe. "I don't know," he whispers, his breath the faintest wisp of fleeting silver in the air, and that hurts even more - to admit that he doesn't have an answer.

"You do not have to," Zenyatta says, gentle again. "Not right now. But it is, perhaps, something you should also think about."

"What if I can't find an answer?" Genji asks, almost plaintive.

"I think that you will," Zenyatta says, and a part of Genji marvels at the certainty in his voice, the absolute _faith_. Genji wishes he could be that certain of _anything._

He doesn't notice Zenyatta scrutinizing him, and is startled when the monk rises, laying a hand on Genji's shoulder as he does. "It seems to me that I have given you quite a bit to think about. I will take my leave, if you so desire."

Genji hesitates, and then nods. Zenyatta squeezes his shoulder, and Genji wonders again how he can so easily convey the impression of smiling. "I will be at the shrine if you have need of me," he says, and then he's gone, leaving Genji alone with his thoughts.

He could laugh. Leave it to Zenyatta to come in with all the placidity of a still lake on a moonless night and leave a hurricane in his wake. Isn't that how he ended up here in the first place?

The valley is lighting up, the first shafts of sunlight slanting through the gaps between the mountains. He can hear the noise of the village behind him – children laughing, people chattering, the clatter of carts, a hammer clanging insistently. Genji pauses, and then reaches up to undo the clasps for his mask. He pulls it away, blinking to clear his slightly blurry vision, and then closes his eyes as he breathes in the thin, cold air that smells like snow and wood smoke. He can't feel it much on his face, but it burns in his throat and lungs, a good, clean burn.

He feels taut and raw, like a violin string tightened to the point of breaking. He feels like he's on the edge of something immense, something he can't quite yet grasp.

He thinks he might want to try.

He smiles slightly as he opens his eyes again, just in time to see the sun break over the mountaintop.

* * *

First time I finished a fic in a while...and did I play ten minutes of a custom game as Genji to get the scenery right? You bet. The main impetus for this fic was the bit of conversation about hope and desire preceding belief. It's kind of a struggle for me to get into Genji and Zenyatta's head but I think it turned out pretty well and I'm pretty proud of it. Thanks to Tanya for being a constant inspiration and most of the reason this fic found its way out of my head, and to Erich for the support, cheerleading, and beta-reading.

Title and epigraph come from the song "Level Up," by Vienna Teng, which is a great song for Overwatch in general and which I feel really fits Genji in the post-Fall, pre-Recall time of his life.

This is crossposted from ao3 - originally published 08/03/2017. I've written a few Overwatch works now and may crosspost more of them, but if you're interested, I'm under the same name on ao3.

Thanks for reading, I hope it was enjoyable.


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